AFL misses the mark with global-focused marketing push

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People in Barcelona, China, New York and other parts of the globe should be watching the AFL this season according to the sport’s new TV advertisement (watch below).

Yes the AFL has international ambitions; yes it is intent on growing the sport around the world. But this is pure folly.

The 2013 ad is misguided at best.

It focuses on the belief that if people from different parts of the world are exposed to AFL that they will be instantly amazed by the game and love it. It’s a tall order and a little disrespectful and naive.

I’ve been to Barcelona, New York and Shanghai and Nanjing in China. I didn’t see any big AFL viewing audiences there. Maybe I went to the wrong bars and rooftops.

AFL has a much stronger presence in places like Ireland, the UK, New Zealand and Canada, so it’s surprising they passed on these countries.

The International Rules series has struggled for relevance recently, so maybe this is an attempted boost. By ignoring AFL’s fans at home in the ad though is somewhat of a risk.

If the premise is to reflect its desire to be a global game, fair enough. Dream big.

The flipside is that the statement ‘Wherever you’re from, there’s nothing like our game’ also has the message to people in Australia, regardless of your background, that AFL is for you. This is a smart play.

The tagline ‘Australia’s game’ is a strong one. AFL is the only indigenous sport in Australia, created here, and that is a very powerful selling point.

Using ACDC again, and the great song ‘Long Way To the Top’, is also a nice touch. This is a song synonymous with Melbourne, the cradle of Aussie Rules. But apart from that this TVC is a bit flat.

In the past the AFL has created some fantastic ads, much better than the other footy codes in Australia.

Last year’s effort was good. It spoke to the expansion of the game in Queensland and NSW, connected the grassroots and displayed its multicultural roots.

The 2009 effort was a beauty. Featuring the Dropkick Murphys and AFL action interspersed with other sports, it was a visual feast.

It really did demonstrate the toughness, strength and athleticism of AFL players. Ending with the tagline ‘In a league of its own’ really drove the message home.

And who could forget this 1996 effort? The mixture of international celebrities marvelling at AFL was cheeky and fun. ‘I’d like to see that’ became the catchcry of a generation.

Compared to these, the 2013 effort just doesn’t stack up. Yes it’s bold and ambitious, but it doesn’t entertain or engage like past ads. It’s not something that will really impress or get viewers to share around, which today is a sign of modern marketing success.

The Crowd Says (111)

Isn’t it just the AFL’s attempt to sell the game to parts of Australia that don’t traditionally engage with the sport? I’m sure that the codes regular supporters will see straight through this… actually scratch that.
I’m sure some very well paid marketing firm has convinced the AFL that by releasing an ad portraying an international sport that codes with this element in their game will see the AFL in a different light. Obviously this is flawed as no one can go watch England V’s Australia or New Zealand Vs Australia etc… (Yes the faux world competition doesn’t count towards this).

It is like American gimmick selling. Like a stticky, you know the yank who is selling those roller sticky things.
The AFL has gone American to sell a Aussie product, and it shows.
I almost thought it was a basketball ad with all the yanks involved.

Not sure if youre serious… Could you please provide a quote or link of proof RE; “Rugby league, when superleage occurred, arrogantly proclaimed that the Chins of China & Manfreds of Munich & Dileeps of Delhi would be following their game as soon as they were exposed to it.”

Super league did go over the top in 1995 and maybe the Telegraph said something like that but they even hired foreign speaking NRL commentators/callers in the expectation that they would dub foreign commentary over local games. It was all a ploy to get the NRL pay rights and get packer onside and it worked…

I actually have an article lying around & primary newspaper sources from the day, but I’m not going to trawl through them just to make you happy.

I’m not going to provide a link or proof of anything. I was there in 1995 & this is what the superleague people truly believed.

Not only was everyone across the world going to be enthralled with rugby league, they even went to the trouble of advertising for mandarin & hindi speaking commentators (among others) in anticipation of the rush.

I’m not picking on just rugby league. All the footy codes are guilty of this kind of rubbish to greater & lesser degrees.

BTW, superleague’s vision of a 14 team national comp, with no more than six Sydney teams, was the right structure. But the idea was killed by greed on all sides.

Sheek is absolutely right. I remember seeing ads during the Super League war days calling for rugby league commentators who could make a call in Mandarin.
As another blogger says, this was probably part of the News Ltd hype to justify what they were doing. But, of course, it never amounted to anything.
There was also a much-touted (by Roy Masters) Super League move into the Pacific Islands,especially Tonga.
Sheek’s earlier point that most of the major codes have trouble migrating out of their places of origin is a valid one. The case of gridiron is illustrative. It is played on the professional basis in the USA and Canada and nowhere else.
AFL is played on a professional basis only in Australia
Rugby league is simllarly confined to a couple of countries.
Football is the outstanding example of a code that is played everywhere in the world. It is the Coca-Cola of of the codes that have emerged from the football wars of the late 19th century.
Rugby also has a growing world-wide playing profile with professional leagues in all the continents. But it is Pepsi-Cola compared with the geographical reach and popularity of football.
The AFL should stop wasting money on being an international sport. This is never going to happen, if only because new stadiums catering for the dimensions of the AFL game would have to be built ewverywhere, except in cricket countries..
As for league, I’ve never understood why there hasn’t been a concentrated effort to bring Papua New Guinea into the Premiership, and also a fresh attack on the AFL territories inside Australia including Tasmania, South Australia, the Northern Territory and West Australia.
Before for a code that is so entrenched in NSW and Queensland, it is amazing that the country beyond the Barassi Line is still enemy territory as fas as league is concerned.

First up I am an long standing International Aussie Rules fan.
Your comments about” the AFL should stop wasting money on being an international sport” deserves an answer.
The AFLs international budget would be about 2 million tops out of the millions they turn over. The exact figure is not published and never has been.
They have only in recent times suggested the Clubs themselves start getting involved with the International Scholarships. Some of the clubs have invested small amounts (100,000) in overseas countries like South Africa and NZ.
They have had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the international table – so as to speak.
The AFL does not waste its money overseas because the amounts they do spend are miniscule.

They run an International Cup (No expats allowed) every three years in Melbourne/Sydney and do not subsidise even half the the airfares for the competing countries – The French team as we speak are saving hard for the 2014 series. All local international comps -big and small – are Amateur and self funded locally in their countries.
I could go on but you get the picture.

When you say RU has professional competitions on all continents do you mean fulltime professional competitions?

Anyway,I read somewhere that their are only a little more than a dozen countries in the world with the economic might that can sustain professional competitions (at least 12 teams) of any football or sporting code.

From memory those countries would be the USA & Canada,Brazil & Argentina the UK (but not Ireland) The Netherlands, Germany, France,Italy, Spain,Russia, India, China & Australia.

To be fair to football – it is already a feature of every country on the planet. A bit hard to find new ones! But it is booming in India, China and in a commercial sense in the US. Bottom line – globalisation is selling football in a way TV never will….

I have less reason than ever before for wanting another football code in my country.

Indians & Chinese & Americans & Europeans, assuming they have a passing interest in Australian football, can watch it through pay-TV, without having to worry about starting up a comp in their own country.

the key for many years was the capacity for those who wanted to play to be able to play.

All sports will have their stories – obviously though, a single nation game like Australian Football struggled to grow anywhere off shore – because even if someone had studied in Australia for a couple of years, or backpacked around the country or whatever – and returned home to America, or Europe or whereever – in the main, they couldn’t play the game even if they wanted to.

Over the last 20 years something has changed on that front. And it hasn’t been via any concerted effort from AFL HQ.

Clubs playing Aust Footy have sprung up with just those stories – people can no google and find a club nearby to play for or more easily access ‘support’ to establish a new club. Internaional expats are growing the game – in that, I mean for example the Icelandic fellows who played footy in Denmark and took the game back to Iceland upon their return. New clubs springing up in Europe not started by displaced Australians but by the locals.

The reality is the AFL couln’t have budgeted for this – and haven’t. The AFL though has been playing a bit of ‘catch up’ with what HAS been happening. However – the disconnect that will always exist is that the AFL is focussed on the top level elite money making league.

Some may point to India, but the Indian Football Federation was established in 1893 & India has won medals for football at Asian Games & even finished 4th – above the host nation – at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.

Antarctica is the final continent that needs to be conquered, but we may wait for a few more years …. Apparently, the weather in Antarctica is forecast to be more pleasant in the future!

No, i am going to dissagree with you on this one Sheek. On 2 fronts. First, we did not have tele 100 years ago, so up until about the 70’s, nobody really knew how or what was going on.
And 2, yes American Gridiron has not expanded, that is because it is a expensive sport and a extremely hard sport to break into if your not a giant.
Why would India or China give try to break into a sport that will only bring minor results to the landscape.
I think Rugbies and even AFL have better chance expanding into these billion popultations.
I wont mention football as it is already there.
There is a huge market for every code to expand. It might take another 100 years to get there, but they all will expand eventually.

The 2 rugby codes already have Anerica playing in both world cups. China and India should not be that far behind. Maybe another 10-20 years. That is not long really.

I don’t agree. I am a Detroit Red Wings fan. I am a Storm supporter but first and foremost I am a blues supporter.
You can have a favourite team and not have to block everything else that pops up.

My love for ice hockey started in the brief window that SBS showed after school back in the mid 90’s. Still love it now.

You might not sign up for a membership but you will certainly watch your other teams on the box.

I hate the ad because I think it too overtly panders to going global . If the AFL had hooked up a lot of international coverage agreements I would be all over it as there would be substane behind it. As it stands, I don’t undertsand why it is a national comp that is all of a sudden going global, this year in particular.

There is nothing wrong with being a bit ambitious. I will not run with the rest of the posters on this page and say, “You might fail so why bother trying at all”.
It is a bloody great sport and I genuinely think that if people saw it, a lot of them would get behind it.

Sheek – you’re right in most of your assumptions, but some sports do manage to create a niche for themselves and, if lucky, can expand more over a couple of generations. Rugby is ideal at this strategy globally (although not getting ahead in Australia). There have been many more nations able to compete at each RWC, even though it would only be the 3rd or 4th sport in these countries.
AFL has made a successful niche in Sydney – 30 years ago the Swans were bottom of the average attendances, and now are top, although it does help sometimes to be successful over a number of years, although the Storm are the exception to this rule – they started at the bottom of average attendances in Melbourne and are still there, even though they have been the most successful NRL team in the last decade.
Sometimes there is a gradual shift over a number of years and before you realise it, your sport is not as big as it once was – baseball in the US used to be as big or bigger than the NFL. The English and French league teams used to regulary beat Australia – but that was over 40 years ago.
So 30 years may not be a large enough timetable to judge incremental changes and this may be a long term strategy for the AFL and therefore hard to judge over 10 or 20 years.

Sheek – although I said that that sports establish niches, there is perhaps a overlap between being a niche and expanding to being a mainstream comp, which is what you allude to with the AF. Although at present the AF is niche in Sydney, it may be considered mainstream in the east, north and inner city, which may be why they put a team out in the western suburbs which, at this point, would hardly follow AFL at all.
If, after 15 or so years, they are still at the bottom of all winter sports in average attendances, then that would be considered a failure. If the Swans still manage to be in the top third of average attendances and GWS are in the 3rd quarter of average attendances, then that may be viewed as a success – time will tell, and incremental gains over this period could indicate a solid gain towards mainstream acceptance.

30 years ago rugby union tournaments consisted of the five nations and the odd tour between two national or representative teams.
Now 92 teams worldwide battle it out to claim a berth in the fourth largest sporting event in the world.(well 80 battle for 8 spots, the other 12 are automatic entries – but whichever way you look at it, that’s a massive change in the sports international profile).

Yeah they cause the odd upset, they’ll only get better. With the improvement of Italy,Samoa and Argentina,to become world beaters it shows the game can grow in all regions. As well as the fact that Japan is hosting the 2019 world cup which will bring a boost to asian rugby.

It’s a strange ad and the message isn’t very clear. I don’t get why someone in America being impressed by an AFL clip is at all relevant to someone in Australia. Is the message that AFL has global reach and appeal or that it’s “Australia’s best kept secret” that the world doesn’t know about? The idea of showing clips to people overseas but continuing to state that it’s “”our game” seems to be a contradiction.

Compare it the NRL’s ad. The NRL’s ad was very clear. It was targeting women and children and I think it did it’s job very well, though I can see why the more traditional NRL fan wouldn’t like it so much. However an ad should probably be trying to target a new audience. An ad designed to “preach to the converted” seems like a waste of money. In contrast, I’m not sure who the AFL is trying to target.

I don’t mind an ad ignoring it’s core. It seems a bit of a waste of $$$ to make an ad that tells people what they already know. The NRL ad ignores its core to a degree but I think it works really well as it’s very clear who they’re targeting (women and children) and it executes it very well. The AFL ad just seems confused.

I actually think that the ad would have worked much better if, instead of getting footage of people overseas watching the game, they had Australians from all different heritages watching the clips e.g. Australians with Asian heritage, African heritage, British heritage, continental European heritage etc and then brought them altogether with the “Our game” and “Australia’s game” slogans.

Matt I agree in general but the AFL is at risk of ignoring/slash abusing it’s core so much it becomes hollowed out, talk of charging extra for “blockbuster games” for the general public is just one example.

And while I also agree you don’t need to market as hard to your core, if you ignore them completely and take them for granted the will move away.

True, but my point was specifically related to this ad. The talk about the “blockbuster tax” and numerous other ways that the AFL tries to exploit its base are completely unrelated to this specific ad and this specific article.

Yes I agree with you Matt, exactly my sentiments after watching the ad – the message was not clear. Was it that the AFL is a global sport (which everyone would agree, is not the case), or was it that the AFL is going global (in which case, can someone tell me when the next sell-out AFL game in London, Paris, or New York is?). There is a game on ANZAC Day in Wellington NZ, which I’m really looking forward to seeing, but where are the other international games? The best ad by far is the one which features the bullfighting.

I think the afl’s pitch is that the globe is watching “our game” the musics all right we can familiairise ourselves with that, I wonder what somebody who’s supported Nth Mlb for thirty years would think?.

I thought they should’ve shown off the newer clubs a bit more like the suns and giants.

I would’ve taken the viewers back down memory lane with the commercial and explain the past and where the futures going but more nostalgia.

I actually don’t think it is to get people from around the world to watch it, it is to convince Aussie’s that it is good enough to be a world game and that if the world was smart enough they would be watching it.

Not a bad ad, interesting approach and interesting insight into the AFL’s new war footing. Just as I thought the League ad was in a way to combat Footballs participation and gender friendly qualities, I think this, in a way, is to combat Football’s global appeal.

It will be interesting to see how this increased competition between all the codes affects each one.

There ill be an international version released later. As the AFL does not have International Rights to the AC/DC music it will be without that.
Go to the AFL twitter account for more information regarding this.
Its not a war footing, simply marketing football for 2013.

Micka, that is probably true. And many have said that watcxhing (i am going to leave that in their, the x) sounds Chinese. hehe,
watching a game of AFL is fantastic. Ok, maybe it is, but other sports are far better to watch on TV.
Rugby league is by far the best sport to watch on tv. They dont shuffle cameras all over the place, they zoom in on the action at all times, and your sight of vision is only in the air for a breif period. Plus the game is at a perfect amount of time. 1 hour 30 minutes.

Even sitting at a game can give you a sore bottom over this period. Put you in traction if you have back problems.

AFL is not suited to a world audience. Plus they have major problems with the 360 degree part of the game, running into a ruck and knocking yourself senseless is not a good look.
If they shortened the game and fixed the knockouts, then they might be able to sell the game better.

A tourist to Sydney or Brisbane would know straight off that rugby league is a major sport in Australia. AFL after 150 years is still only rated a Melbourne game. That is the general perception.

Oikee – spoken by someone who lives in Brisbane/Toowoomba/Oakey…If you went to melbourne or Adelaide or perth, you would hardly know NRL exists.

What was the AFL to do? Like the NRL, its puts out a yearly ad and its hard to come up with something fresh every year especially when your star player drops out at the last minute. Why is there no criticism of the NRL for focussing on one player for their season launch when they have had four catastraophes in recent years as to the face of the NRL.(Barba, Stewart, Marshall and one other). How many times does it take till the penny drops especially as barba had issues late last year according to the press..

Oikee – spoken by someone who lives in Brisbane/Toowoomba/Oakey…If you went to melbourne or Adelaide or perth, you would hardly know NRL exists.

You know “American Werewolf in London” i drank at the pub and walked those dales.
Called the Tan hill. Highest pub in England.
You know where Captain Cook sailed out of Witby from, i stood between those whalebones and seen Cook;s bronze. I walked the 286 steps up to the castle where Dracula was born, (created in writing),, and seen the Minster(York) that from eleven hundred took 200 years to build, sits inside the Roman walls of York, and walked the cobble streets the roman’s built in 300 a.d.

I like to go where rugby league is at least played and supported and exists. . England NZ and Sydney.
I live in Queensland, Toowoomba the Garden city, on top of a mountain, where we get 4 seasons. I have found heaven i am just waiting to be picked up by God.

That is just up the road from the Oakey Army Barracks, where they have a major open cut coal mine, not far from where Alan Jones the Radio jock was born at Oakey.. 🙂

How about you, been to any of those places, i bet you haven’t even been to Oakey. hehe

League is played/supported along the M62 in the North of England and a bit in Cumbria, thats about it! (oh and the London Broncos ‘franchise’, which proves the point of not moving into established markets, i.e. it’s supported by Aussie expats only!)
!